How ITS Generated
$4.185 Million
THROUGH PROCESS OPTIMIZATION
Summary
ITS Traffic Systems used accessorial analytics and freight process optimization to help a leading North American appliance manufacturer convert $4.5 million in annual accessorial charges into actionable intelligence, generating $4.185 million in documented transportation savings across a $40 million freight network while maintaining 100% carrier payment compliance.
How ITS Reduced Freight Costs by Over $4M
Transportation leaders face constant pressure to reduce freight costs while maintaining service performance, carrier relationships, and operational efficiency.
For one leading North American appliance manufacturer managing more than $40 million in annual freight spend, accessorial charges totaling approximately $4.5 million per year represented a growing area of cost with limited visibility into root causes.
Invoice data existed. Meaningful business intelligence did not.
ITS Traffic Systems partnered with the organization to transform years of freight audit data into actionable operational insights. Using accessorial analytics, root-cause investigation, automated audit controls, and shipment-validation processes, ITS identified the recurring operational factors driving preventable charges and implemented sustainable process improvements across the transportation network.
The result: more than $4.185 million in documented process savings, 100% carrier payment compliance, and a fundamentally stronger, more data-driven transportation operation.
This case study demonstrates how freight audit data, when analyzed at scale, becomes a source of operational intelligence rather than simply a payment process.
Metric
Total Documented Process Savings
Annual Freight Spend Managed
Average Return Per Freight Bill
Carrier Payment Compliance
Annual Accessorial Charges Analyzed
Result
$4,185,000
$40 Million+
$18.66
100%
$4.5 Million
WHAT ARE ACCESSORIAL CHARGES IN SHIPPING?
Accessorial charges are fees applied to freight shipments for services beyond standard pickup and delivery. Common examples include liftgate usage, detention time, address corrections, residential delivery surcharges, beyond-point delivery fees, and weight reclass charges. According to industry benchmarks, accessorial charges typically account for 8% to 15% of total transportation spend for enterprise shippers. For organizations managing $40 million or more in annual freight, that equates to $3.2 million to $6 million annually in accessorial costs alone. Yet most organizations treat them purely as invoice line items rather than as a source of operational intelligence, leaving millions in potential savings unidentified.
CLIENT OVERVIEW
Industry: Consumer Appliance Manufacturing
Organization Profile: A leading North American appliance manufacturer operating a large transportation network supporting manufacturing, distribution, and customer delivery throughout North America.
Transportation Operations Include:
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Truckload (TL) shipments
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Less-than-truckload (LTL) freight
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Air freight
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Specialized transportation services
Scale of Operations:
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More than $40 million in annual freight spend
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Approximately $4.5 million in annual accessorial charges
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Tens of thousands of freight shipments annually
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A network of manufacturing and distribution locations
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A diverse carrier network
Like many enterprise shippers, transportation data was abundant. However, converting that data into actionable operational improvements remained a challenge.
THE BUSINESS CHALLENGE
Why Do Accessorial Costs Keep Rising?
Most shippers treat accessorial charges as unavoidable expenses rather than symptoms of fixable operational problems. This is the core challenge ITS identified and solved.
Accessorial charges appear on transportation invoices every day. Most organizations focus on validating charges and ensuring correct payment. Few systematically investigate what recurring accessorials reveal about underlying transportation processes.
For this manufacturer, recurring charges appeared across multiple high-volume categories:
Charge Category
Beyond Charges
Weight Verification Charges
Liftgate Charges
Annual Activity
36,000+
6,300+
2,600+
Individually, many charges appeared reasonable. Collectively, they represented a significant and growing portion of annual transportation spending.
“Why are these charges recurring?”
“Are internal operational practices contributing to recurring costs?”
“What opportunities exist to improve overall network performance?”
- ITS Client
“Can transportation controls be strengthened proactively?”
“Which charges are truly unavoidable vs. preventable?”
Answering these questions required more than invoice auditing. It required an analytical investigation into the root causes behind the data.
HOW ITS TURNED FREIGHT DATA INTO ACTIONABLE INTELLIGENCE
The engagement began with a clear objective: distinguish unavoidable transportation costs from preventable ones.
This distinction is critical because industry research indicates that 30% to 50% of recurring accessorial charges stem from preventable upstream process failures rather than legitimate service requirements.
Rather than examining invoices individually, ITS Traffic Systems evaluated transportation activity at scale. Data was analyzed across seven dimensions:
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Accessorial categories and charge types
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Carrier invoices and billing patterns
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Shipment characteristics and attributes
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Delivery location profiles
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Freight audit records and historical data
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Charge frequency and recurrence patterns
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Transportation-provider billing trends
Patterns invisible at the transaction level became clear when viewed across the broader transportation network. Recurring charge categories quickly emerged as priority opportunities for deeper analysis.
THE INITIATIVE FOCUSED ON THREE CORE PILLARS:
Visibility
Surfacing hidden patterns in accessorial data
Root Cause Analysis
Identifying the operational factors driving recurring charges
Preventive Controls
Implementing automated systems to catch and prevent future exceptions
HOW DID BEYOND CHARGES REVEAL HIDDEN DELIVERY PATTERNS?
Beyond Charges represented the highest-volume opportunity, with more than 36,000 annual occurrences generating significant preventable costs across the network.
The Problem: At first glance, Beyond Charges appeared to be isolated delivery events. However, broader analysis revealed recurring shipment and delivery scenarios that repeatedly generated the same exceptions. The issue was not charge validity. The issue was visibility: without meaningful reporting, recurring patterns remained hidden within thousands of transactions.
The Solution: ITS developed customized automated business-rule controls to identify recurring exception patterns and improve audit consistency.
The Impact:
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Increased visibility into recurring delivery scenarios
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Stronger validation procedures for exception charges
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Improved exception management across the network
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Greater consistency across all freight-audit processes
Transportation leaders gained insight into operational patterns that were previously impossible to detect at scale.
HOW DID WEIGHT VERIFICATION CHARGES UNCOVER UPSTREAM DATA ISSUES?
More than 6,300 shipments per year generated weight verification activity, signaling a systemic data accuracy problem upstream in the shipping process that no amount of invoice auditing could solve.
The Problem: Transportation data accuracy plays a critical role in carrier billing, shipment planning, and cost management. When shipment records and carrier-recorded weights differ, recurring transportation exceptions follow.
The Solution: ITS implemented automated match-file verification processes that compare carrier-reported shipment information against internal shipment records, identifying discrepancies before they generate charges.
The Impact:
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Improved shipment-data accuracy at the source
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Better visibility into weight-related transportation exceptions
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Enhanced reporting and monitoring capabilities
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Measurable reduction in verification-related charges
What began as invoice analysis became a transportation-data accuracy improvement initiative.
HOW DID LIFTGATE CHARGES EXPOSE SHIPMENT-PLANNING OPPORTUNITIES?
More than 2,600 shipments annually generated liftgate-related charges that could have been avoided through better pre-shipment planning, representing one of the most easily preventable accessorial categories in LTL freight.
The Problem: Many liftgate charges resulted from incomplete visibility into delivery requirements before shipment movement. Identifying delivery characteristics earlier in the process could prevent downstream exceptions.
The Solution: ITS introduced third-party address-validation tools to verify location requirements and delivery characteristics before shipment dispatch.
The Impact:
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Better planning accuracy for equipment requirements
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Improved pre-shipment verification of delivery conditions
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Greater visibility into delivery-site characteristics
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Reduced preventable accessorial events
This initiative demonstrated how transportation analytics directly influence operational decision-making before freight ever moves.
WHAT PROCESS IMPROVEMENTS REDUCED FREIGHT COSTS?
Based on analytical findings, ITS implemented four key transportation-management enhancements that created a closed-loop system for identifying, preventing, and monitoring accessorial exceptions:
Automated Audit Controls: Custom business rules introduced to improve consistency and proactively identify exceptions before they become recurring costs.
Match-File Shipment Validation: Carrier and shipment information automatically compared to improve data accuracy and flag discrepancies in real time.
Address Validation Processes: Delivery characteristics verified before shipments enter the transportation network, preventing avoidable accessorial charges.
Enhanced Reporting and Analytics: Accessorial analytics converted into meaningful performance-management reporting, giving transportation leaders ongoing visibility into cost drivers.
Together, these improvements created a sustainable foundation for continuous transportation optimization.
RESULTS
$4.185 Million in Documented Freight Process Savings
The transportation improvement initiative generated measurable, verified savings across multiple years, demonstrating that accessorial analytics delivers compounding returns as process controls mature.
Year
Total Documented Process Savings
2024-2025
2026 YTD
Savings Generated
$2,250,000
$1,300,000
$635,000
Total
$4,185,000
Return on Investment
The organization achieved $18.66 in average return per freight bill processed while maintaining 100% carrier payment compliance throughout the engagement. For context, the industry benchmark for freight audit ROI ranges from $5 to $20 per bill processed, placing this engagement in the top tier of documented performance.
This balance between cost optimization and payment performance preserved strong carrier relationships while delivering substantial, documented financial results. Unlike rate-negotiation strategies that can strain carrier partnerships, process optimization creates value for both shippers and carriers by reducing billing exceptions and disputes.
STRATEGIC IMPACT
What Value Does Freight Analytics Deliver Beyond Cost Savings?
The long-term value extended well beyond direct cost reductions. Freight analytics transformed how the organization managed its entire transportation operation. The engagement helped establish:
Better Transportation Visibility: Leaders gained actionable insight into recurring cost drivers throughout the freight network, replacing guesswork with data.
Stronger Operational Controls: Automated validation processes reduced dependency on manual review and human error.
Improved Decision-Making: Transportation data became a source of operational intelligence rather than merely a financial record.
Sustainable Improvement: New controls reduced the likelihood of recurring issues returning over time, creating compounding savings year over year.
The outcome is a transportation operation that was more transparent, more accountable, and better equipped to manage future growth.
Key Takeaways: How Enterprise Shippers Can Reduce Freight Costs
Many organizations view freight audit primarily as a means of paying invoices correctly. The most successful shippers use freight-audit data as a continuous improvement tool. They use it to identify:
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Process inefficiencies generating avoidable costs
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Shipment-data accuracy issues creating downstream exceptions
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Planning opportunities to prevent charges before they occur
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Operational trends signaling systemic problems
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Recurring transportation costs that can be eliminated at the source
Every accessorial charge contains information. When analyzed at scale, that information reveals meaningful opportunities for operational improvement.
Organizations that consistently reduce transportation costs are not simply negotiating better rates. They are improving the processes that generate costs in the first place.
For this leading North American appliance manufacturer, accessorial analytics became more than a reporting exercise. It became a business improvement initiative that fundamentally changed how the organization manages transportation costs.
By combining transportation expertise, freight-audit intelligence, automation, and process optimization, ITS Traffic Systems helped the organization uncover opportunities that generated more than $4.185 million in process savings while maintaining 100% payment compliance across tens of thousands of annual freight transactions.
The result was not simply more efficient invoice management. It was a smarter, more data-driven transportation operation built on a foundation of continuous improvement.
The bottom line: Every enterprise shipper has freight data. The organizations that outperform their peers are the ones converting that data into operational intelligence and acting on it systematically.
“Organizations that consistently reduce transportation costs are not
simplynegotiating better rates. They are improving the processes
that generate costs in the first place.”
-Evan Baschko, President & CEO of ITS Traffic Systems, Inc.
FAQs
What are accessorial analytics in freight management?
Accessorial analytics is the systematic analysis of accessorial charges to identify patterns, root causes, and preventable costs within a transportation network. Unlike traditional freight audit (which verifies invoice accuracy), accessorial analytics investigates why charges recur and implements data-driven process improvements to eliminate them at their source. Organizations typically find that 30% to 50% of recurring accessorial charges are preventable.
How much can freight accessorial analytics save?
Enterprise shippers managing $40 million or more in annual freight spend commonly identify 5% to 10% of accessorial costs as preventable through process improvement. In this case study, ITS Traffic Systems helped a leading appliance manufacturer save $4.185 million over a multi-year engagement, representing a reduction of approximately 10% of total accessorial spend. Results scale proportionally with network size and the maturity of existing audit processes.
What are the most common preventable accessorial charges?
The five most common preventable accessorial charges are: (1) beyond-point delivery fees caused by recurring routing exceptions, (2) weight verification and reclass charges from upstream data inaccuracies, (3) liftgate fees resulting from incomplete delivery-site information, (4) detention charges driven by scheduling and appointment failures, and (5) address correction fees from outdated consignee databases. Most of these stem from fixable process gaps rather than unavoidable delivery conditions.
How does freight audit differ from accessorial analytics?
Freight audit is a payment-integrity function: it verifies invoice accuracy by confirming charges match contracted rates. Accessorial analytics is an operational-improvement function: it investigates why charges occur, maps recurring patterns across thousands of transactions, and implements automated controls to prevent future charges at their source. Freight audit asks "Was this bill correct?", Accessorial analytics asks "Why did this charge happen, and how do we stop it?".
What is the ROI of a freight audit and payment program?
A well-managed freight audit and payment program typically delivers $5 to $20 in return per freight bill processed. Programs that include accessorial analytics and process optimization consistently perform at the higher end of this range. In this engagement, ITS delivered $18.66 per freight bill while maintaining 100% carrier payment compliance, demonstrating that aggressive cost optimization and carrier-relationship integrity are not mutually exclusive.
How long does it take to see results from freight accessorial analytics?
Most organizations begin seeing measurable results within 90 to 180 days of implementing accessorial analytics, depending on data availability and the complexity of their freight network. Initial quick wins typically come from automated audit controls catching overbilling, while larger process-improvement savings compound over 12 to 24 months as root-cause initiatives take effect. In this engagement, the client achieved $2.25 million in savings in the first full year.
What size shipper benefits most from accessorial analytics?
Shippers with $10 million or more in annual freight spend and $1 million or more in accessorial charges benefit most from dedicated accessorial analytics. At this scale, the volume of transactions creates enough data density to identify statistically meaningful patterns, and the dollar value of preventable charges justifies investment in analytics infrastructure and process improvements.
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